UC Berkeley Press Release

Seven faculty members named AAAS fellows

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 27 November 2006

BERKELEY – Seven faculty members from the University of California, Berkeley, have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), bringing the total number of fellows on campus to about 200.

The UC Berkeley electees are among 449 new fellows to be inducted Feb. 17 during the 2007 AAAS annual meeting, which will be held in San Francisco. All are honored "because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications," according to AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

The new fellows will be announced in the Nov. 24 issue of Science. The UC Berkeley honorees are:

• Jonathan A. Ellman, professor of chemistry: "For seminal contributions to bioorganic and medicinal chemistry through compound library synthesis and evaluation and new methods for asymmetric amine synthesis and catalytic C-H functionalization."
• Jack F. Kirsch, professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology: "For distinguished contributions to the field of mechanistic enzymology including the discoveries of viscosity variation and chemical rescue, and for advances in the directed evolution of enzymes."
• Michael Jordan, Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Department of Statistics: "For distinguished contributions in the field of statistical machine learning, especially in the area of probabilistic graphical models."
• Johanna Nichols, professor of Slavic languages and literatures: "For innovative contributions to our understanding of the prehistory of the world's languages and for dedicated work documenting the endangered Chechen and Ingush languages.
• Stuart J. Freedman, professor of physics and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL): "For important contributions to our understanding of fundamental symmetries in atomic and nuclear physics, and to an understanding of neutrinos and their weak interaction."
• Steven G. Louie, professor of physics and senior faculty scientist at LBNL: "For fundamental contributions to the theory of solids and nanostructures, including his pioneering development of first-principles study of excited-state properties and prediction of new materials."
• Henry Brady, professor of political science and of public policy, and director of UC DATA: "For outstanding contributions to the study of elections, for leadership of Berkeley's Survey Research Center, and for pioneering efforts to break barriers between qualitative and quantitative methods."

The AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science that serve 10 million individuals. The tradition of AAAS fellows began in 1874, with members elevated to the position in any of 24 sections.